


So Long

by versigny



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Long-Distance Relationship, Post-Break Up, Requited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 07:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10238549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/versigny/pseuds/versigny
Summary: "Was the fire inside your gut enough to convince of the fact that you needed love - to go on?"-So Long, by Whitaker





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [V](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=V).



This is not a date.

You have said that sentence in your head so many times it should have lost its meaning, but it doesn’t. You can repeat any other combination of infinite words in the dictionary a million times, til they are gibberish and hollow syllables without sense – but this sentence does not fade in its intensity.

What you are doing tonight is not a date.

It provides only the smallest measure of comfort when you hover in your room like a lost moth, fluttering back and forth from your closet to your bed and plucking and rearranging outfits that will never see the light of day. You don’t want to be overly casual, but you don’t want to be overtly dressy. Just nice. Normal. Sane. You settle on a large white v-neck – oversized and comfortable and cute – and a flattering skirt that you only realize he probably won’t even see until it’s too late to change your mind. Putting on makeup, too, is eased by the phrase: _it’s not a date._

There is an addendum you tack on when the anxiety sparks: _so it doesn’t matter._

You have long been an expert as using sadness as a method of keeping you calm.

It’s hard, though – it’s hard to wander through your shared house, roommate gone for a family vacation, and see the pictures on the walls. Every now and then, amidst the friends and relatives, there is a bright, rabbitlike expression among the faces with with strawberry-blonde hair, wide, nervous eyes and brows perpetually pulled up in a way that screams _hello, I have chronic anxiety_. Even his smile is anxious. Pictures of his face stuffed with food all have a tinge of fear in his eyes, the same as the silly selfie you took with him, framed on the miniature stand by the front door where you keep your keys and wallet.

But you like to think that one he looks happy in. If anyone can be happy and anxious at the same time, it’s Kim Doyoung.

And speak of the devil.

A chiming, obnoxious ringtone from your bedroom frightens you into action. There is no extra time to check your appearance in the mirror – you can only beeline through the living room and down the hall to your room, snatching your phone off the nightstand and freezing for a moment as his picture stares back at you from the screen with two equally terrifying options: answer, or decline.

You very well might regret either choice, but your finger selects the green button and you decide to savor the sensation the world shattering around you as muted panic and painful anticipation kicks in.

“H-hello? Hi? H-hey!”

The video fumbles for a hot second as Doyoung proceeds to almost drop his phone, but the image straightens and you can only laugh awkwardly at the boy on the other side in crisp red plaid flannel looking a bit flushed as he blinks.

“H-hey you! A-ah, I’m glad this is working… It’s good to see you. Hi,” he somehow manages to respond like a semi-normal person. It’s a miracle that twenty seconds in neither of you have had to throw up yet.

“Nice to see you too, Doyoungie,” you warble back, trying to catch your breath. Your heart is racing like you’ve just run a marathon, as opposed to answering a fucking FaceTime call, but whatever. Whatever. That’s just the way things go with him.

“It’s,” Doyoung swallows tightly, almost looking like he’s in pain as he tries to get out the right words, “really good to see you, actually. Really, really good.”

And you don’t know what to say to that.

Truth is, while you were preparing what to wear and how to look and distracting yourself at all other times, you failed to prepare for the one thing you should have been – and that was practicing what to say.

The state of your universe had been upheaved by him, twice now. You and Doyoung went way back, if you counted middle school and high school band as “way back”, and he had always somehow tangled into your life since then – mostly by accident. Your first kiss was a drunken endeavor at a party in high school. Doyoung skipped homecoming with you to stay at your place and marathon the Harry Potter movies, but took you to prom and became so nervous he abandoned you to hang out with his other friends. You didn’t forgive him for that, except you secretly did when your first girlfriend broke up with you and he drove 45 minutes to pick you up from the party you were at and let you sleep in his bed, with him in it.

You were drunk then, too, but not enough to forget the way he cradled you in his arms and sang all your favourite songs softly until you had cried yourself to sleep. He left a painkiller and glass of water on the table in the morning before he went to his internship, and you could still acutely remember your head throbbing and your chest hurting and your eyes watering and in the middle of that mess, your heart melting as it whispered  _‘I love him’_. You wished you’d been hungover enough to forget that part, too.

But things happened, and you ended up in Doyoung’s bed a lot more often, and dating far less.

It was the day after Christmas when he texted you to say he was taking another internship in a different country and you guys should, you know, probably break up. For a terrible, wonderful moment, you realized he’d considered you guys an item to begin with.

And then the moment was gone. And then he moved away. And the world became greyer, and quieter, and lonelier, and you tried to maintain the same smile as you did before, lest anyone realize what you had realized that morning after the breakup.

“Wow,” he laughs suddenly and with a strangled pitch from his end, “this is pretty awkward, huh?”

Blushing, you try to play it off. “Only if you make it awkward.”

“Heh, yeah, I guess you’re… you’re right. As usual.” Doyoung shuffles on the other end, biting his lip and still smiling nervously. He must be in his dorm, you think, judging from the sound of a bed creaking and a large poster on the wall of… a rabbit…

Oh.

“I, um, I’m glad you still have the poster I got you,” you murmur, trying not to get choked up, trying to keep smiling, too. You should have known from the very instant he messaged you, saying you guys should FaceTime sometime and catch up, it could only go badly for you.

Nine months was a very… very long time.

Doyoung almost looks offended.

“Of course I do,” he insists, brow furrowing. “I would never get rid of it. It’s important.”

“You threw out your rough draft of your thesis after you printed it with your coffee from that morning,” you remind him patiently, and he makes a face so ugly you can only throw your head back and cackle.

“See, this – this is why I need you around,” he says, trying to keep things light and joking, “because you keep my life in order. You remind me of everything I don’t want to be reminded of.” But it doesn’t sound joking. At all.

Your giggles subside into confusion and bittersweetness. Kneeling on your bed, you almost forget that you’re alone in your house and this isn’t just a normal old conversation he’s having with you, laying in bed before you both fall asleep.

Keeping up a disjointed, pleasant stream of talk is a joint effort. You catch up on school; you tell him about your roommate and all the wild sex she’s having (and you’re not), and he tells you about his mentors and how there is no good food in a two mile radius, meaning he can’t just walk anywhere to eat anymore (an old pastime of yours). Eventually, he stops looking so strained, and you stop stammering through all of your bad jokes, and you can nearly pretend this is normal.

Then Doyoung frowns at an incoming text, and you, so absorbed in the easy rapport that you had missed with your entire being, quip, “Got a hot date?”

Doyoung nearly drops his phone. When he recovers, the anguish in his features is literally painful to look at as he stares at you and whispers, “No.”

Silence swarms the room. He can’t decide where to look – his hesitant eyes, so sharp and intelligent and unsure, flit from his sheets to his shaky hands to you, every inch that he can see. His heart is simultaneously incinerating and freezing a cold, violent death, and Doyoung isn’t a brave person, he’s a foolish person, but those things overlap sometimes and you swear his eyes look a little glassy as he suddenly inhales sharply and everything he has ever bottled up comes spilling out like an ocean in a bottle.

That’s what he’s always been, hasn’t he? Someone very beautiful and breakable with something endless and complex inside that has always threatened to swallow you whole.

“I can’t do this,” Doyoung whispers again, and his smile is raw and real this time as he blinks back tears. “I can’t keep… pretending things are okay without you.”

“Wh-what?” you croak back. Your heart is hammering, clamoring to take up all the space in your skull with its vicious pounding while you clutch your phone.

“I feel like I’m dying, all the time,” he blurts out in some powerless attempt at explaining everything he has wanted to say for so long now, “I should have known the, the moment we ended up in the same homeroom in high school and I didn’t even have to take my klonopin the first day of classes you – you were special, and good. You’re the best. I-I’ve never told you that because I am a piece of shit, but you’re the best thing that has ever happened. To me. You’re… you’re my best friend. You’re my person. I-I love being with you. I _love_ you.”

Those three words strung together seem to light something up in him. The tears are flowing freely, now, and you can muse dumbly in the static of your mind at how anyone could look so good while they were crying. 

“That’s all,” he chokes out, sniffling and giggling a little hysterically. “I just needed to tell you that. You can hang up on me if you need to.”

You can’t perceive the amount of time that passes between his confession and you realizing you’re sobbing yourself into pieces, all the swamplike weight draining out of you like Howl returning to the castle. It’s only the sound of Doyoung’s voice, fuzzy through the muffled speaker _begging_  you to answer him, apologizing a thousand times, that restarts your consciousness and you sniffle and gasp as you remember to pick up your phone again. A split-second image of your puffy, red-eyed face, mascara smudged and stray hairs sticking to your temples prompts you to turn it away to your skirt instead. At least he could see it now.

“C-cute skirt,” Doyoung hiccups, and your smile is so wide it hurts and you can taste your own tears.

“I-I love you, too, Doyoung,” you get out in short, uneven bursts of breath, wiping away desperately at your face. “I have always, always been in love with you, forever, and I missed you so bad, and I want you to come back, but I want you to have a l-life and a c-career and I don’t, I don’t know what t-t-to do, I just–”

“Come see me.”

He doesn’t stutter or hesitate. He means it. With every ounce of his being.

“I have money. I don’t have anybody to spend money on anymore,” he teases, aching adoration mingling with sincerity and his own desperation in every utterance. “A-are you busy? Tomorrow? The day after? I can take Friday off, and then I have the weekend and I… I-I… Fuck, I want you. Forever. But I-I’ll take what I can get.”

You hum, unable to stop crying. Nine months, as it were, is a very long time to not cry.

“I-I’m free,” you squeak back, nodding even though he can’t see it. “Maybe I’ll just quit my job and leave and not come back o-or something.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he mumbles back, running a pensive hand through his hair – it’s blonder than you remember – and the idea that he might really want you to do that sends a warm, electric pulse through your marrow. Then, he adds gently, “Can I see your face again?”

“I look horrible,” you deadpan instantly. He pouts, and it’s adorable, and is cruel enough to look straight into the camera as he pleas, “Please?”

You sigh deeply. You take a gracious few moments to snatch up tissues and smear and dab at your poor face, and cautiously raise the camera back up. You look terrible, but not–

“You are the most beautiful thing that has ever happened.”

–…not bad. Not bad at all.

“Yeah, well,” you murmur, sheepishly patting at your eyes, “I did get all dressed up for our date.”

Doyoung looks like he’s about to start crying all over again at that statement, so you cut him off before you start up again, too.

“A-anyway,” you say quickly, reaching for your laptop and ignoring how your cheeks hurt from just _smiling_  so much, “plane tickets?”

Doyoung’s whole expression softens, as if you are the only thing that exists, and those words are the only thing he has ever dreamed of hearing. He crawls forward onto his elbows and cradles his phone close to his face to see you as clearly as he can, and he smiles back.

“Plane tickets,” he affirms.

You think this might be the best date you’ve ever had.


End file.
